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Tweeting the Iliad

Two years ago I wrote a post on Using Twitter in Your Course that described how Margaret Rubega, Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut with a PhD in ornithology, had used Twitter to promote active learning in a large lecture course. The post also provides some basics on how Twitter works for those unfamiliar with the social networking application. Recently, a colleague, gave me a link to an example of a faculty member using Twitter in a humanities course.

Sjoerd Levelt teaches at Bilkent University, in Ankara, Turkey in the program Cultures, Civilizations and Ideas, a year-long intensive course focusing on the meaning of culture. At Bilkent, instruction is in English. Levelt’s students are from diverse backgrounds and departments “…including computer sciences, mechanical, electrical and industrial engineering, law, archaeology, and management.” Levelt has a blog, and recently he posted on a course he is teaching on ancient and classical civilizations, covering texts ranging from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Plato’s Republic. The blog post, #Iliad, discusses the challenges he faced in teaching this text (The Iliad) and how having his students use tweeting, provided a solution.

Levelt writes: “The Iliad is not an easy text to read. Robert Fagles’ translation is not an easy translation to read. This would be true for most students (actually, most readers); and my students are further disadvantaged in that for the vast majority of them, English is not their native language, and many of them, they don’t read (or even like reading) literature all that much to begin with.” He wanted to “… explore with my students how we can engage with the classical text through various media…”.

First he had students look at other examples of how tweeting had been used to comment on literary works. Then he asked them to discuss how and why tweeting was effective in these cases. Students recognized that tweeting provides summary, explanation, commentary, and humor, among other things. In fact, reading with the idea that one will need to summarize, comment, and explicate the text in short sentences, forces students to read closely in order to grasp complexity and subtlety.

Levelt did not require the students to set up Twitter accounts. Instead he had them tweet on prepared “tweet sheets” that replicated the look of a Tweet. The assignment was structured; students were assigned to tweet as one of the characters in Book 3 (the focus of the assignment).

#Iliad, Book Three
Write “tweets” –on paper!– describing (a selection of) the narrative of book 3, from the perspective of the person whose identity you have been handed in class:
Paris (@FoolForLove)
Menelaus (@BattleHungry)
Helen (@TooPretty)
The Achaeans (@NotAHorse)
The Trojans (@HorseBreakers)
Use all 6 “tweets” of your handout to give your version of Book 3. Each tweet: maximum 140 characters. Bonus for creative use of hashtags and @mentions. Perspective: think, for example, of what your character can know, what they would find important, how they would view certain actions and events, what kind of language they would use.

After the students had completed the assignment, he had them come together in groups in class based on their characters (all the Helens, all the Trojans, etc.). The groups selected tweets from the combined sheets to share. Levelt then, with the permission of the students, shared their tweets on his Twitter account. He teaches three sections of the course, so there are three classes represented. These are their tweets: Class 1, Class 2, Class 3.

Levelt writes: “I was very impressed with the range and variety of aspects of the text reflected in my students’ tweets – from Helen’s conflicted internal monologues to Menelaus’ asking the troupes for retweets, and from a baffled Menelaus wondering what just happened after Paris disappeared to Helen’s shocked ‘selfie’ watching the battlefield, there are many very interesting readings of the text, and very few poor ones. Many of the tweets also provided opportunity for further discussion in class.” Moreover, students commented that the assignment made them look at the text with fresh eyes and engage with it based on their own experiences, leading to reading in a way that they had not done before.

This is an innovative use of social media to stimulate student engagement and higher level learning. Please share in the comments section examples you might have of similar assignments.